Friday, October 9, 2009

Euclidean geography

Total distance: 564.9 km

By Sundance:

Yesterday was EPIC! After our update from the Italian restaurant where we had dinner, we hurtled through the night, through the city of Euclid (which is much bigger than it looks on the map, and Euclid ave is much less straight than the name may suggest). We eventually made it into Cleveland, and got thoroughly confused trying to find our way to the house of the friend we're staying with. At least twice we found ourselves on bridges going over the roads we wanted to get onto. In any case, we finally made it to Samantha's place, for a grand total of 124.22 km travel in one day, pulverising our previous record for distance in a single day. And we can still walk this morning! Not surprisingly we'll be taking a day to rest and veg out and resupply.

And after all the winding our way around the streets of Cleveland in the wee small hours of the morning, navigating by the GPS and Google Maps features of my Crackberry, I think I'm going to write DON'T PANIC in large friendly letters on the cover of its carry-case.

By Yana:

It feels like I should fill in some of the details we skipped in last night's entry. As you have already read, we have gone pretty damn far, and we did also get to see a few interesting things during the day. We actually spent an inordinate amount of time faffing around the first town we passed through, Geneva on the Lake. What was supposed to be just a quick stop to buy some more jelly beans turned into something much longer, as we ended up chatting with some locals, who, of all things, had a pet dingo in the backseat of their car! Okay, it was only a half-breed, but still, a bloody dingo! Whose bright idea was it to import those to the US and turn them into pets? It's somewhat reminiscent of an anecdote we read in a book a while back, in which the author's friend decided to purchase a wallaby on eBay. It seems like the line between wild animals and pets is getting increasingly blurred.

We also meandered through the very cute little town of Ashtabula. It was an intriguing mix of charmingly quaint and grittily industrial - it worked surprisingly well. We read the various information plaques, rode up a steep cobblestone street (well, Sundance did, I only went two thirds of the way before wheeling it for the rest), took a few photos, and continued onwards.

The Seaway Trail we had been so fond of (now the Coastal Ohio trail) actually let us down a little bit in terms of efficiency at that point. It was going to be a big day regardless, and instead of the usual efficient nearly as-the-crow-flies line to our destination, it actually took us on an extended zig zag. Eventually, we got fed up with that and abandoned it in favour of the more direct route down the 20. It also decided to start raining on us, but apparently that is just no longer a biggie. We just put on our wet weather gear, and forged ahead. And hey, there was little to no wind, so we ended up cruising at a surprisingly high speed. We'd gotten so used to having to deal with a headwind that not having it makes us feel downright superhuman!

One thing which is a little bit bothersome: we have caught so many whiffs of skunk on this trip that at times, it seems like everything has a very slight skunk-like aroma as we're riding along...

About Us

We're an intrepid couple of Australians, on our way from Ontario back to Oz, the slow way (In case you haven't guessed, we made it!). We have decided to ride our bikes from Ontario to California, and from then on, intend to continue our trip whichever way we can, preferably some of it by boat. This blog is meant to document our progress, mostly so our friends know what we're up to, but also just in case anybody wants to read the adventures of a pair of randoms.